Red Planet Noir is the debut novel by Baton Rouge writer D.B.
Grady. An anachronistic mystery set in the far future, it follows Mike
Sheppard, a down-and-out private eye. A hard drinker and chain smoker,
Mike's wife has left him. Business is slow. Loan sharks are nipping at
his heels.
When he's hired by a bombshell heiress to investigate a murder on Mars,
he sees it as a chance to escape his troubles in New Orleans and make
some fast money. But as the case unfolds, he discovers conspiracy,
and-in the noir tradition-is soon pursued by cops and gangsters alike.
And whenever he encounters a door, there's a good chance someone's about
to walk though it with a gun.
Much of the novel was written while Grady was deployed to Afghanistan. A
former U.S. Army paratrooper, he wrote on his downtime as a way to
decompress from the stresses of the combat zone. "The moodiness and
uncertainty of life in Afghanistan had a strong influence on the novel,"
Grady says. "But it's a natural fit with the moodiness and uncertainty
of detective pulps from the 1930s."
Grady conceived the novel as a Raymond Chandler mystery in a Robert
Heinlein world. From dress to vernacular, the story could have just as
easily taken place in Al Capone's Chicago. The novel opens:
"When the phone rang, I was half-drunk, half-dressed, half-asleep, and
half expecting it to be the phone company reminding me that the bill was
past due. I didn't have any money because I didn't have any clients, and
I wouldn't have any clients if they cut my line, which I had told them
only last month and the month before that. They were becoming a
nuisance."
Setting the story on a Martian colony allowed Grady to view humanity
through a slightly different lens, and give a private eye whose seen
everything an outsider's perspective. But whether a corpse is found in
an alleyway or on a space station, murder never changes. It is always
driven by the same passions and motives, the same misunderstandings and
recriminations.
Though some might describe Red Planet Noir as science fiction, its
protagonist, Mike Sheppard, uses old-fashioned detective work to solve
the case. "An episode of CSI is far less believable than a Sherlock
Holmes mystery. Good police work has changed very little over the years,
which is why Holmes still resonates a hundred years later." Red
Planet Noir treads the same classical path. There are no special
labs with holograms that magically reassemble bullet fragments. Instead,
it's all about finding the right people, and asking the right questions.
In one exchange from the novel, Mike confronts a suspect.
"The cops already questioned me," he said. "I didn't do it."
"You got an alibi?" I asked.
"Yeah, at the time of the murder, I wasn't killing him."
The novel is dedicated to Grady's wife. "Writing is a lonely affair. It
means closing the door and blocking out the world for hours a day, every
day. When you're married, that means it's lonely on both ends, and
without my wife's patience and support, I couldn't have done it."
Baton Rouge has also been very supportive. The Advocate praised the
book, saying, "Grady likes to keep the action moving. There's a good
detective story here that incorporates the sciencefiction elements as
plot devices. It works well as it did for Philip K. Dick in his books,
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep and We Can Remember It For You,
which became hit movies Blade Runner and Total Recall (set on Mars),
respectively."
Though Red Planet Noir can be ordered from just about anywhere,
Grady recommends Cottonwood Books on Perkins. "Danny Plaisance [owner of
Cottonwood] has been extraordinary in supporting not only my novel, but
the entire Baton Rouge literary community for decades now. He knows
books, he knows the city, and to set foot into his store is like
stepping into a book lover's Garden of Eden."
Red Planet Noir by D.B. Grady ($14.99, ISBN: 978-0-9641674-3-8,
Brown Street Press) is but the first book of many for the Baton Rouge
author. More information, including the first chapter, is available
online at www.dbgrady.com .
|
